Chapter 16 #2
Child?
Are you there?
I woke up with a gasp—a wild, sucking gasp that had my heart beating like crazy in the confines of my chest. It felt like I’d just gone down a steep drop on a roller coaster, except I was in bed with Duncan snoring away by my feet.
It hadn’t been him. It hadn’t sounded like him. That… that voice had been louder and too clear. Way deeper than my donut’s.
But it had definitely been male.
Had I dreamt it? I tried shaking away the grogginess clouding my brain. I didn’t think I’d been asleep long.
I’d heard it though. I knew I’d heard it. It hadn’t been a dream.
“Hello?” I asked out loud, more hesitantly than I should’ve been considering I usually thought so highly of myself for not being scared of things.
The only answer I got was in the form of Duncan’s snores getting even louder. There was no voice coming from under the bed or in the closet. Not out loud, not in my head, like how Duncan and his mom could communicate.
Nothing.
Shoving the covers away, I stood up and slipped my feet into my shoes before opening the door. Duncan still didn’t stir, so I turned and took the staircase, trying to listen. My gut said I hadn’t imagined it.
The hallways were just as empty as I’d expected them to be at this time of night. Agnes had to be dead asleep, and I didn’t expect Franklin to be roaming the halls either. At the front door, I threw it open.
“Hello?” I called out, looking around, for a sign? For red eyes? For someone randomly standing there? For something . “Hello?” I was louder that time.
“What was that?”
I screeched, flinching so violently I almost pulled a muscle in my abs, as I whipped around, ready to fight for my life… only to find Henri standing in the doorway, looking sleepy and grumpy.
And only wearing sleep pants.
Loose sleep pants. There wasn’t a shirt in sight. Just… muscles.
Lots of muscles.
Broad, bulky pectorals that had chest hair sprinkled across them before tapering into a flat, hard stomach with another sprinkle of dark hair there too, his waist thick but firm?—
Quit it.
I snapped my gaze up to a safe zone. “Did you hear that too?” I asked, a little high-pitched from him surprising me, not from his chest hair. “Or am I going crazy?”
His eyebrows came down on his forehead as he frowned. There was a crease across his cheek from a pillow that was way cuter than it had any business being. It made him look so… normal. “I heard… something.” Those clear, bright eyes flicked down to my pajamas—a faded T-shirt that barely reached the tops of my thighs.
Oops. I’d been too distracted to put shorts on.
His jaw tightened before he lifted his eyes and asked in a slightly funny but sleep-rough voice, “You all right?”
“I’m fine.” A shiver came out of nowhere, racking up and down my spine. “You heard something then too? Because I still feel like I’m imagining it.”
He dipped his chin even as his irises roamed from my face down the rest of me one more time, lingering low for longer than I would’ve expected. I didn’t need to touch my legs to know there were goose bumps up and down my thighs. “Sounded like someone talking in my dreams.” He frowned even more. “You scared?”
I shook my head, thought about it, then shrugged.
It was one thing to have Duncan talking to me telepathically, but a stranger?
Being vulnerable… helpless… was a shitty feeling.
A really, really shitty feeling.
As if he could read my mind, Henri’s brawny arms opened, and he gave me this look, this invitation….
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I walked right into him. Right up to the living wall that was Henri Blackrock. Straight into his embrace, plastering my front to his, and let him wrap his arms around my back as I threw mine around his ribs like a freaking leech. And like a leech, I had zero shame about clinging to him.
“You’re safe,” he grumbled into the top of my head as he drew me in even closer somehow, meshing our fronts together.
“Okay,” I muttered, my cheek flat to the skin and hair on his sternum.
He was so warm, and he smelled good . Better than with clothes on. Like cool, fresh weather that couldn’t be soap or cologne because I couldn’t think of a single werewolf that would willingly use something scented since their noses were so sensitive.
A hand skimmed up my back. “What exactly did you hear?”
I’d swear his voice sounded deeper.
“It said ‘child.’ It—he—asked if I… someone… was there.” I didn’t want to say it sounded like it had been for me. That was ridiculous. Wasn’t it? He’d heard it too, after all.
“You heard ‘child’?”
I nodded, slipping my hands to land on the sides of his waist, right over the material at his hips. It was soft cotton. Thin too.
His heart beat under my cheek. “That’s all?”
I nodded some more, trying my best to take another discreet sniff of him. How can he be so toasty with no clothes on? I wondered, making sure to keep my grip on his waist loose and easy, while some part of my brain was ready to just… drape myself over him like a blanket.
“Ever heard it before?” he asked, not struggling to keep his thoughts straight, like I was.
“I don’t think so.” That… that might have been a lie. Already the memory of the speaker’s tone was leaving me. “Maybe? Remember I told you about that voice I’ve had ‘dreams’ about before? It might have been the same one, but I don’t know. It’s been a really long time since the last dream I had.”
The palm on my back stopped right in the center of it, his fingers molding to my spine. I wondered if he could tell I didn’t have a bra on, because I could definitely tell he didn’t have underwear on. But I’d run out here half dressed, and so had he. I’d gotten used to living around exhibitionist Sienna. I was pretty sure that after Matti and her mom, I might have been in third place for the person to have seen Sienna’s butt the most.
And now, I was thinking about Henri’s butt cheeks. Whether they were high and tight, or meatier at the bottom. Were they tan like the rest of him, or did he go without a shirt often enough that there was a nice tan line where his pants met his shirt?
Stop it, Nina.
“That’s all you heard?” Henri asked, oblivious to me daydreaming about his heinie while trying my hardest to pretend like his quarter chub was no big deal.
“Yes, just ‘child’ and ‘are you there?’ That was it.”
A thought strong enough to have me stop thinking about what was pressing against my stomach hit me.
Could it have been Duncan’s dad?
My knees almost went weak at the possibility.
“Do you smell anything in the air?” I asked Henri, instead of sharing my concern. “Anything close by that shouldn’t be there? I couldn’t see or sense anything out of the normal. The trees aren’t pointing fingers.”
“No,” he answered right before the sound of his inhaling filled the ear I had pressed to his chest. He held his breath for so long I was tempted to look up at him to make sure he was fine. His exhale only lasted a fraction of what his breath had. “There’s nothing close by out of the normal.” The hand on my back slid up a little, and I was sure this had to be considered a cuddle at this point. “What are you worried over?”
I wilted at getting busted again. Might as well admit it. “I was thinking… remember I told everyone that Duncan’s mom communicated with me telepathically?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “Do you think that could’ve been his dad? Maybe he has something blocking his scent?” My legs felt out of sorts all over again, and my arms might have clung a little tighter around Henri’s waist.
His body went solid. “I see what you’re saying.” He pulled back, concern written on those hard, dark features. “I’ll look. Go inside.”
Go inside? Was he kidding? “I’ll get a golf cart and go with you.”
He shook his head. “I’ll travel faster on my own.”
“But what if you need help?”
“No. We don’t know who or what that was,” he argued before a very faint smile slowly crept over his mouth. His eyebrows scrunched together. “You worried about me?”
I made a face. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re not such a brat after all.” Before I could give him crap, the werewolf took a step back. “If you hear anything, holler. I’ll hear you.”
Unfortunately, I was too hung up on him being out here with me without a shirt or underwear on to do more than stare as he stepped off the deck, his form shimmering briefly before his other body. The gorgeous black wolf shot off into the woods, his stride reminding me more of a horse than what he was.
I had the strangest urge to hug him.
And I suddenly missed my parents so much. I hoped they’d call me soon. Sometimes they forgot they had a needy kid who liked hearing from them while they lived their isolated and quiet lives, just the way they wanted to.
And then I wondered where I got it from.
I waited and watched Henri disappear in the distance between trees that seemed even taller and more unreal in the darkness. Moonlight reflected off some of the bark, giving it that shimmering quality that I’d seen the first day we’d gotten here. It was faint, but it was there.
Minutes passed. Then more minutes, and I slowly realized just how quiet it was out here. There wasn’t a hoot, a howl, or frogs.
It was spooky silent.
But that got me thinking about how I wasn’t really alone. How….
I took a couple steps off the deck before calling out, “Mr. Gnomes? You never told me your names, but are you there?”
Nothing and no one answered, and I felt a little dumb for thinking they would have. What did I expect? That they were waiting around, listening?
Rustling at the tree closest to me had me looking down to find four sets of eyeballs through a small circular knot in the wood.
How did they do that?
I crouched. “Hi.” I felt like a jerk for bothering them, but not enough of one to tell them never mind. “I’m sorry for waking you up yelling,” I apologized instead.
“We were not in slumber,” one of the gnomes answered. They all had such similar features that I wasn’t sure whether he was one of the ones I’d spoken to in the past or not.
“We prefer to work under the cover of the moon,” one of the others explained.
“Oh, all right.” I still felt bad for being so impulsive. “Thank you for coming. I don’t have an offering tonight, I’m sorry.”
The gnomes peered at me.
I guess I was forgiven?
“I called you because I wanted to know… did you happen to hear anything? A few minutes ago?” I asked, feeling a little—or more than a little—foolish. They had literally just explained that they hadn’t been sleeping. Henri had said he’d heard the voice too, but it had been in his dreams.
“What is it that you expected us to hear?” one of them asked.
“I thought I heard a man calling out for a child.”
“In your dreams?”
I nodded.
The two in the front blinked at the same time. “Your kin, we would suppose.”
My kin ?
My butt plopped down in the dirt and pine needles without my control, like some imaginary being had swept my legs out from under me. “You… think it was someone in my family? Why?” I croaked.
The gnomes exchanged the same kind of glance Sienna and I did when something extra ridiculous came out of Matti’s mouth and we were trying to decide who was going to give him crap about it. “Who else could traverse dreams?”
Of all the things that had happened in my life, this felt the most unreal. And I had a puppy with red eyes and a flame on his tail. And I’d sent people to the hospital.
“Did you respond?” one of them asked.
I squinted. “No… I thought….” The truth was, I wasn’t sure what I thought when they were implying I had relatives—parents—who could speak through dreams.
How was that possible?
“Do you think it might be my… father?” I squeaked, since that was the family member they had been so focused on before.
There was no hesitation when they agreed. “Could be him.”
I went lightheaded.
“Could be another member of your kin,” they suggested.
This wasn’t helping.
“I would answer if I were you,” the other one claimed. “The old ones don’t take well to being ignored.”
They’d gone there. The old ones. My hands started tingling for the first time in weeks.
Could they be right? Could it be a biological relative of mine? It didn’t add up. It didn’t. Not when I took into consideration that I was in my thirties and had never known anything about anyone I shared blood with. But… “I want to make sure I understand and that I’m not hallucinating. You’re saying that whoever is calling out for a child… I’m that person?”
“Yes,” the gnomes answered in unison.
“But Henri, my friend, the wolf, said he heard him too.”
They shared another glance before their small eyes landed on me. “Yes.”
This didn’t feel possible. Pressing my palms together, I tucked them under my chin and whispered, “My friends… can I call you that?”
“You may,” they agreed.
“I don’t know what any of what you’re saying means,” I admitted. “I was abandoned as a baby. Whoever left me didn’t care enough to put clothes on me. I highly doubt that anyone who could do that, who could go over thirty years without ever having anything to do with me, would suddenly care now.”
I wiped at my face without thinking about it, without realizing that my eyes had started tearing up at some point. In anger, mostly. Maybe a little in frustration.
I had gone through a phase early on after my magic had presented itself, where I’d been scared of myself. That had been the only real, genuine fear I’d ever known—other than the incidents with someone trying to take Duncan. But there was something almost terrifying about feeling helpless, and that’s the effect the voice talking to me had. It told me that this person was strong enough to communicate with me while I was unconscious , to get into not just my head, but Henri’s too. It was almost unfathomable. If they could do that, what else were they capable of? I’d heard stories. How the oldest magical beings, the ones who had been there at the beginning when the meteor fell, how much more potent their gifts were. How they were the gods we still knew about from the oldest tales.
Just because their followers stopped writing their stories doesn’t mean their books were finished, my mom had told me once. It only means we got to see some of their chapters.
Something big moved through the forest as the small, wrinkled faces scrunched up even more as the gnomes stared at me in silence. Then each one reached a hand through the knot in the wood and placed a cool palm on the part of my leg closest to them. “There is no excuse for abandoning a child. Your pain and hurt is not unfounded.”
I wanted to argue that it wasn’t pain I felt but anger. Annoyance. Frustration. The ugly stuff, but before I could, the gnomes kept going, ignoring the sounds of heavy weight crashing over leaves and debris.
“All will be well, child,” one of the gnomes predicted. “There is nothing to fear. The old one may anger, but the dreamer has returned.”
What did that even mean?
Before I could get another word out, they were gone… and where their faces had been, bark had replaced the spot.
The sound I’d heard approaching from a distance came to a stop behind me, deep breaths filling the silence. I whipped around and stared up at the colossal wolf standing so close I could count his eyelashes. The dark creature dipped his head and snuffled against my throat, all warm comfort and sharp teeth I didn’t fear.
I threw my arms around his neck.
I hugged Wolf Henri so tight. So freaking tight. Because maybe he didn’t want to marry me, but he’d said I was one of his people.
And right then, I needed a hug more than I needed anything else.
I leaned into him and pressed my forehead to the side of his snout, right beneath his eye. Grateful for this. Grateful for him. This had to be what hugging a bear felt like, or the equivalent of a land shark.
He didn’t have to be out here. He hadn’t needed to comfort me earlier or now. He hadn’t even needed to roll out of bed.
But he had because he was that kind of person.
And dang it, this wasn’t the time to think of just how much I liked him, but I did. I liked him so much. Everything about him. The physical part was the smallest factor of it all.
Henri, bless his soul, didn’t deny me anything. I clung, and he let me. I sucked up his strength, and he said it was fine.
What might have been five minutes or ten went by before his body changed. Fur and muscles turned into smooth skin covered with a touch of body hair. Arms wrapped themselves around my back. Face to chest, hips to legs, that strong hand palmed the back of my head, holding my cheek to him in what I might call tenderness.
I hadn’t planned on saying it, on telling him, but apparently some part of my conscience decided it was a good idea to blurt it out, not even trying to be easygoing or funny about it. “I don’t know what it is about you, Fluff, but you make me feel safe.” I cuddled him closer. “I know you won’t rip any spines out for me, but it’s still nice.” I moved my cheek just enough to feel the crisp hair on his pecs slide across my face. “Thank you for this.”